Every story has a beginning, and this one starts on a sultry, summer evening on Wanda's porch, somewhere on St. Simon's Island, Ga.

Wanda -- that's the only name we have for her -- used to host storytelling get-togethers with friends, including poet and novelist George Dawes Green.

As they listened, spellbound, to one another's yarns, the friends decided they were like the buggy nightlife that fluttered through the hole in Wanda's porch screen: They were drawn to stories like a moth to flame.

Green eventually moved to New York but he missed the intimacy of these summer evenings, so he began hosting storytelling sessions in his apartment. The events caught on and moved to an outside venue -- and The Moth soon became one of New York's hottest cult events. Nearly 10 years later, The Moth is a thriving non-profit with a mainstage show that always sells out. Always -- and usually within 48 hours. Faster than a moth through argyle.

The curated shows revolve around a theme but are always unscripted and personal, with headliners and regular folks alike baring their souls in a perfect narrative arc.

The roster of "ordinary" storytellers has included an astronaut, a voodoo priestess, pickpocket, hairdresser, anthropologist, cab driver, owl expert, sanitation worker -- and on and on. Everyone, it seems, has a story to tell. And audiences drink it up, even in a digital age known for short attention spans.

"I think we long to connect on a deeper level, and I think that's what stories can do," says Lea Thau, The Moth's executive and creative director, who runs the day-to-day operation while founder Green now sits on the board of directors.

Apart from its mainstage show, The Moth has spun off competitive story slams, corporate trainings and workshops for the homeless and other marginalized people.

This past spring it completed its first national tour -- it was at Seattle Town Hall last fall -- and its Bumbershoot debut Saturday offers a chance for a new kind of audience connection.

"We're at the end of the 500-year period when the printing press dominated," said Bob Redmond, programming manager for Bumbershoot. "People are going back to spoken-word forms or they're finding other ways to connect their craft to their audience."

So it's not surprising that The Moth has inspired similar storytelling ventures in other cities -- including Seattle.

But we're getting ahead of the story.

On that night as I was walking up to him, I knew he was dead. He had a bullet hole in his chest and he wasn't breathing.

-- Jahara Gonzales, on her first EMT ride-along

Storytelling, a la Moth, is not stand-up comedy, nor is it a dramatic monologue -- though it may tug at emotions from both ends of the spectrum.

"We like to reflect life in all its facets," Thau said, "and that includes humor and it includes heartbreak."

At the hilarious end was writer Jonathan Brady's account of how he and his roommate, Joey, hid a forbidden space heater from their miserly Irish landlord while Brady's father was there visiting the old country.

Brady's best lines, delivered to howls of laughter, go like this:

"Me and my dad have kind of this wordless exchange, where he looks at me and wordlessly communicates, 'I raised an idiot.' I look at him and wordlessly communicate, 'Well, I can't disagree with that, Dad, but let's play it cool here, because things are going to happen really quickly now."

The story is called "Room on Fire."

In another story, poignant and full of regret, editor Nancy Finton describes a terrifying encounter, years ago in Norway, with a would-be rapist.

"I remember it was a quiet night because I was wearing these new leather shoes, and after, like, wearing Converse hightops for three years, I was so proud of these leather shoes and the way they'd make a sound on the concrete. ... I was crossing this little park when, for the first time, I understood what people meant when they say time froze. Because I still have this millisecond in my mind, frozen there, and inside it is one sound -- the sound of somebody else's shoes behind me, running. And one thought: If he grabs me, I'll kick him hard with my new shoes."

Though the 10- to 12-minute stories are unscripted -- no notes or cheat sheets allowed -- they aren't impromptu. Storytellers are coached on how to frame a tale so it hits home and reveals universal themes.

"The most important part is, what's the emotional truth of the story?" Thau said. "What are the deeper human themes? If you just tell a story about what happens to you, why should I care?"

A pre-show cocktail hour further fortifies the storytellers, who mingle with audience members before and after shows and sit among them at cabaret tables as they await their turns onstage. Audience reaction feeds the storytelling energy, creating a kind of emotional dialogue.

Authenticity is essential. Shtick is abhorred, and Thau said audiences will turn on storytellers who resort to it.

"This is not a performance," she said. "The moment it becomes a performance, it absolutely dies."

I stood there in the lobby and I remember seeing my mother come down this long hallway toward me ... and then she recognized who it was, and she turned and walked away again. ... Two-and-a-half weeks later a black funeral wreath was delivered to me at my office with a note that said, "In memory of our son."

One day, nearly five years ago, Dave Snyder saw The Moth on a cable channel and shared his excitement with KUOW colleague Jeannie Yandel.

"We were having a beer," Yandel said, "and he was like, 'It's fantastic! It's just people telling stories they've been telling their whole lives. Why don't we have something like that in Seattle?"

Yandel's response was, "Let's do it."

With The Moth's blessing -- "We are all about spreading the storytelling," Thau said -- they set up a Seattle storytelling venture modeled after the New York original. They held their first event in February 2003, taking the improbable name, "A Guide to Visitors."

"It's like you're giving a guided tour of your brain when you tell a story," Yandel explained.

Seattle has its share of literary and stage stars who presumably could spin a good yarn, but Yandel isn't interested in corralling headliners.

"I'm sort of predisposed toward wanting to hear stories from people who don't have a venue to tell stories," she said. "I really, really, really like hearing the story from (for example) the woman who works at the lost-and-found at Seattle Center."

"Overwhelmingly," added Fletcher, "the storytellers are everyday people who haven't done anything like that before. We had a whole show one time that was bartenders, and that was one of my favorite shows."

Every story has an end and this one is almost there. The Moth says stories should reveal a larger truth, but what is the larger truth of The Moth's unlikely success? Seemingly, that even in this frantic, wired age, we still crave the comforts of a heartfelt narrative.

"The way we learn about ourselves, the way we learn about our history," Yandel said, "is through storytelling. It's worked pretty well for humankind so far."